Hard Cider Orcharding Workshop

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

The Northwest Agriculture Business Center is offering an all day workshop March 18 at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake to educate and recruit future cider fruit growers. Karen Mauden, with the NABC says the growth of the hard cider industry has been phenomenal and the need for hard cider apples is great.

MAUDEN: Right now this is a worldwide problem, and people are looking for other areas of sourcing. It’s not the same varieties of apples. We have over 400 types of apples between these bittersweets and bittersharps, which have a higher tannin content and produce a different characteristic. It’s not an apple that you’re going to bite into and say “this tastes good”. You may say it tastes like a variety of things that you just wouldn’t associate with wanting to eat, but when you take that juice from that apple that isn’t pretty and doesn’t taste good as a fresh eating apple and you ferment it and put it into cider it’s a wonderful product with many characteristics.

This creates an alternative for orchardists for growing with lower cost input.

MAUDEN: The fertilizers and the other types of things that they use in creating a beautiful visually appealing apple - they don’t have to have those inputs, so they have a reduced cost of production. We want to show them where the people are that want to buy this, and a lot of these buyers happen to be in Washington and Oregon because they are the juice processors.

During the workshop industry professionals will cover such topics as nutrient and pest management, irrigation, orchard layout, planting and pruning. Information on selecting the right apple varieties, rootstock, what it takes to establish and maintain an orchard, mechanical harvesting, and how growing cider fruit can fit profitably into business plans will also be shared. And hard cider will be sampled to demonstrate unique qualities and characteristics of the fruit.

For more information and to register for the workshop visit agbizcenter.org.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.